Remote collaborative working environments aim at reducing time and space constraints by exploiting existing computer and network infrastructures. Such environments become popular in business, education and research institutions. Several integrated environments for supporting collaborative work exist, but there are very few solutions that consider the hardware as well as the software sharing dimension of collaborative workspaces. Research conducted at Synchromedia ultimately resulted in a highly integrated working platform supporting remote collaborative work.

Elements considered in this platform are:

• Application software offering collaborative services (instant messaging, shared whiteboard, collaborative networking, document and application sharing, videoconferencing, etc.)
  
• A high-performance network linking a set specialized of devices for processing multisensor data.